Ascendly - Attracting & Retaining Customers in A Virtual Environment

Client: Ascendly

Role: UX Designer + UI Developer

Specialities: User Research, Visual Design

Ascendly provides engineering based classes to students 7 - 12 years old. Normally these classes are disseminated by way of after-school enrichment programs. Due to lockdowns, their classes have made a transition to online learning. My task was to accommodate students to online learning and convert prospective and current families to the online platform

Problems + Opportunities

A main problem has been converting an in-person experience into a virtual one and creating an online experience that reflects this change.

I set out to define the motives and analyze the current learning experience for various users.

In order to solve this problem I had to sit in on virtual classes, review curricula, conduct qualitative interviews with students and parents and perform a site audit on the Ascendly site.

Below you’ll see questions asked with in-person classes (left) vs the virtual classes(right).

But why does any of this matter?

1. The previous framework did not support an influx of diverse users , which significantly decreased enrollments rates.

2. If a single user didn’t like their initial experience they did not return for another class. If a single user enjoyed the class, they were more likely to re-enroll and refer others.

3. Given the current curricula, an Instructor would have a harder time teaching an online class - especially if that class only had 1-3 students attending.

In other words, it became apparent that assumptions made about the user could actually detract prospective users.

But what data were you working with??

60 students over the course of a year ranging from 7 - 13 years old

Qualitative feedback from students, in the form of collective, informal interviews

Metrics

Can users finish their builds in the time allotted?

Can users create builds that meet the criteria given to them?

Can users verbalize where they are in the engineering process and which part they enjoy the most?

Do students enjoy the process and do parents feel their child(ren) is supported during class?

Technical Approach

I led the design team utilizing the design thinking framework to develop a strong online presence for Ascendly.

The first phase consisted of:

Create User Personas > Identify weak & strong points for each persona > Implement resources during class > Conduct user interviews > Gather outcomes and note changes

User personas

Based on my observations, I created 4 dominant users - The Builder, The Designer, The Collaborator and The Ideator. Usually students are assessed based on their age and gender, but I found these types were consistent across gender, age and ethnic lines. Builders and Collaborators predominated in-person classes, whereas more Designers and Ideators joined the online classes. The Designers and Ideators had a harder time starting and completing their builds, citing they “didn’t know how to build“ a particular structure or “couldn’t decide which idea to build“.

Other interesting observations: The Builders tended to create more monochromatic structures (all red, all blue, all grey), The Designers almost never finished their builds if working alone, The Ideators were most likely to introduce a material that was not a lego and The Collaborators were typically an older sibling and had the most colorful and simplistic builds.

Below: Artifacts I recreated based on a rapid prototyping challenge. The challenge was to create a pyramid in 3 minutes. I didn’t give anyone a picture of a pyramid and everyone worked alone. I did this across two classes where all User Types were represented.

Deliverables

Informal Interviews and Feedback

“Class was so much fun, I can’t wait until the next one. I enjoyed the building portion!”

-Kyria

“I did better at managing my time this class. Look at what I built!“

-Skylar

Outcomes

Resource Type: Modeling with Pictures, Framework to begin build

Controls: Lego set, Prior Exposure to Legos, Gender

User Types Represented: Builder, Designer, Collaborator

PROTOTYPING PHASE

After understanding the type of users the classes retain and drop out, I could move forward with a site audit. This site audit was also an assignment for one of my classes, which you can view here:

For design and development purposes, I used HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP to work complete the site.

The Results